Personally, I leave the Oppomobile running at a gas pump down the street, where it’s easy to refill.
NYC ‘bounty hunters’ score nearly million-dollar payouts reporting traffic ‘idling NY Post | 11/02/25 | Carl Campanile, Marie Pohl
Some street snitches are raking in close to $1 million apiece from the city just by recording videos of idling trucks and buses spewing air pollution, prompting local pols to try to curb the staggering payouts.
“The days of the six-figure bounty hunters are over,” Queens City Councilman James Gennaro, who chairs the Environmental Committee, told The Post.
“We’re not doing that anymore,” he said. “The program has become an occupation. The program was not intended to be an occupation.”
[[ Liberals! Is there anything they can foresee? ]]
The Big Apple’s Citizen Idling Complaint Program was launched in 2019, with the city even recruiting ’80s punk rocker Billy Idol to promote the effort the next year.
“Billy never idles. Neither should you. Idling is polluting. Cut your engine off,” the rock star urged in an ad campaign.
Under the program, citizen enforcers are awarded 25% of the fines pursued by the Department of Environmental and substantiated by the New York City Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, or OATH.
If the tattletales go to OATH directly, they can receive 50 percent of any substantiated offense.
With fines ranging from $350 to $2,000 for idling and 95% of the complaints substantiated, the rewards add up and have turned the streets into gold for the Big Apple’s citizen enforcers.
.
Never could’ve seen that coming.
Well, except immediately after the law went into effect in 2019 . . .
How New Yorkers are making bank ratting out idling drivers New York Post | 28 April 2019 | Julia Marsh
Dropping a dime on trucks and buses that keep their engines running while parked is paying big bucks to some New Yorkers. The number of summonses issued for violating the city’s anti-idling law skyrocketed to 1,038 last year — up from just 24 in 2017 — following the creation of a reward program for ratting out offenders, The Post has learned.
… through June of this year:
New Yorker says reporting idling vehicles makes him over six figures (2.5 minute video) MSN | 6/19/2025
In New York City, it’s against the law for trucks and non-city buses to idle — keeping the engine running while stationary — for more than three minutes. However, the law is rarely enforced. That’s where the big money comes in.
***** He rides around on his bicycle 6 hours per day looking for idling trucks. He records this on his phone. He gets 25% of the fine which can be from $200 to $600.
“Free government money for reporting hard-working truckers?? And a bureaucracy to boot?”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has decreed that, to balance out our highly witty commenters, we must also publish stupid ones, to level the playing field. So Democrats, have at it.
